MORGANTOWN, W.Va.  West Virginia University's president accepted the resignations of two top school officials Monday in a scandal over a master's degree awarded to the governor's daughter, but said he has no plans to resign himself.

"This is a very serious issue," President Mike Garrison said. "I don't want to minimalize it. I will not trivialize it. But I'll tell you, we will move forward."

R. Stephen Sears, dean of WVU's business school, and Provost Gerald Lang are stepping down June 30. Sears' resignation was announced Monday, a day after Lang's.

An investigating panel concluded last week that both men were among several administrators who acted inappropriately and applied "severely flawed" judgment in awarding Heather Bresch a degree the panel said she did not earn.

Bresch, the 38-year-old daughter of Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin, works for one of the university's key donors, Milan Puskar, and is a longtime friend of Garrison.

The report did not accuse Garrison of wrongdoing, and the university's Board of Governors gave him its full support in a statement Monday. Others have been critical, however; some professors have said they'll call for a vote of no confidence in Garrison. The board, which also expects motions in support of the president, has scheduled a special meeting on the matter for May 5.

Garrison, a politically connected attorney who worked for former Gov. Bob Wise, was appointed to his position in April 2007 over the objections of some faculty.

Garrison said at a news conference Monday that he has no plans to resign, and that he was not involved in last year's decision to retroactively award Bresch her executive master's of business administration degree.

Sears and Lang were among eight university officials who attended a key Oct. 15 decision-making meeting regarding Bresch. Garrison did not rule out further disciplinary action, saying that is something he will take up with the board.

The panel that studied Bresch's degree, which was retroactively awarded last fall after records discrepancies were discovered, concluded the administration lacked an academic foundation for deciding she had earned the degree in 1998.

Those administrators relied too heavily on verbal assertions and caved in to political pressure, whether real or perceived, the panel said.

Garrison said that while he took responsibility "for failures" that led to the awarding of the degree to Bresch, he never asked anyone to award "any credit, grades or degree in this case or in any other case."

"Like every member of the university community, I reject the idea that we should award any degree or credit not earned by the student," Garrison said.

Stephen Goodwin, chairman of the Board of Governors, said the latest attacks on Garrison are a rehashing of last year's contentious presidential search process, which he defended as "fair, open and honest."

As for faculty demands, he said: "What I'm suggesting that they do is let their decision be guided by those who have looked at this most closely, the panel."

Sears said he would issue a personal statement in the next day or two.

Lang, who like Sears is to step down June 30, apologized during the weekend.

"I am very sorry that my one action in ratifying a dean's decision in a single situation has had a negative impact on the institution," Lang wrote.

On Monday, Republican Party Chairman Doug McKinney and GOP gubernatorial candidate Russ Weeks echoed the call for all eight officials at the October meeting to resign. They also took aim at Garrison.

"When you fill the presidency of the state's major university with a purely political appointment, it is not surprising when political scandals are the result," said McKinney, a WVU graduate. "The only way to put this behind us and begin to heal is for a clean sweep of everyone involved in this travesty."

Lang has been the university's top academic officer for 13 years. For 19 years before that, he was a dean, assistant dean and faculty member.

Before becoming dean of WVU's College of Business and Economics in 2005, Sears was senior executive associate dean of Rawls College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University, where he taught finance. He has also worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Manchin said through his spokeswoman, Lara Ramsburg, that Lang's departure is a matter for WVU to handle.

Bresch has said she will not challenge the panel's decision and declined to comment on the resignations. Her boss, Mylan Inc. CEO Robert J. Coury, issued a statement saying his board of directors "has never wavered in its confidence in and commitment" to Bresch.